Warhammer 40,000 is getting a new boxed game from Games Workshop – Combat Arena. At it’s looking like a Grimdark remake of the brutal Gorechosen!

When Games Workshop released Gorechosen in 2016, it’s was a neat side game but eventually fell to the wayside. However, you can see it’s influence in the Warhammer Underworlds and it makes me wonder if Gorechosen was the precursor to Warhammer Underworlds. Or maybe Underworlds absorbed Gorechosen and that’s why we stopped getting expansions for it…

Anyhow, GW is now re-reentering the Hex Based Arena Combat sphere with a new game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe – Combat Arena. And if you look closely, you can totally see the similarities:

This image is very telling. You can see the character cards – complete with attack arcs, hit points, and more. You can see the counter board on the top left of the image, and you can see the hex board with it’s arena laid out. Now look at Gorechosen:

Look familiar now? Heck, even the layout and positioning of things is almost identical! Hey – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – right? Based on this image, I’m pretty sure that three decks in Combat Arena are going to be Action, Initiative, and Critical Injury decks. But I’m just guessing here…

Gorechosen was also a way to get your hands on some Khorne Chaos Champions and it wasn’t a bad deal just for the miniatures. If Combat Arena follows suit, I wouldn’t be surprised to get rules for these same heroes in Warhammer 40,000 – they all have pretty obvious factions they could join.

Heck, even the Rogue Trader will have the Imperium keyword so she’ll be able to ally in easily enough. And we also know that these heroes are also tied to the Blackstone Fortress as well – so here’s hoping they’ll be added to that game, too!

One last thing to contemplate about Combat Arena is that if it IS basically Gorechosen with a 40k skin, does that mean the games will be cross-compatible? I’m just tossing this out there as I think it would be a neat thing you could do, theoretically. Chaos already crosses over to both systems – who’s to say that Khorne wouldn’t use his warp powers to send his champions to this Combat Arena – or capture these warriors and bring them to his arena in Gorechosen? It’s plausible!

As a person who can be strapped for time, I’m totally fine with these types of fast-pased combat games. I want to get that itch scratched and I think these “side-games” are a perfect way to do just that. Gorechosen is still a fun game to bust out and play and if Combat Arena is that, but with a new batch of models, sign me up!

What do you think about Combat Arena? Are you looking forward to another Hex-based Arena Combat Game in 40k?